Previous research shows that classroom acceptance critically mediates beneficial educational effects stemming from desegregation, and clearly predominates over personality in predicting academic performance. The proposed research has two prongs. The first focuses upon factors that govern classroom acceptance of minority children. It will relate (1) the extent to which the minority child's speech approximates White middle class linguistic patterns, (2) physical attractiveness, and (3) the extensiveness of family ties with the middle class White community to the child's acceptance by teachers and peers in the classroom. Secondly, we will further explore the relative contributions of personality versus situational factors in mediating educational gains and losses due to desegregation. As part of this second thrust we will use newly developed cross-lagged panel analysis techniques as well as path analysis procedures for uncovering the predominant causal relation between personality variables, sociometric peer status, teacher attitudes toward White and minority children, grades, and achievement test performance. Additionally, we will pursue a more clinical approach to this problem by spotlighting and comparing the cases of individual minority children who show unusual academic gains and losses that are not readily attributable to the artificial consequence of regression. By examining the contribution of non-school influences to classroom acceptance and pursuing the causal relation among these factors, personality, and both academic attitudes and performance, our results will be relevant to theory and policy concerned with the development of essential academic skills. By isolating factors contributing to rejection and acceptance of minority children by their classmates and teachers, the findings will also speak on the issue of pluralism, equality, and opportunity in public education.